Moscow commentator Ivan Davydov provides what may be an even more useful approach in his post “the genealogy of morality of contemporary Russia” which focuses on “how the current rulers are distinguished from the criminal world of the 1990s." The recent scandal involving Russian diplomats and cocaine shipments from Argentina renewed talks in Russia that the current Russian leadership are just like the criminals of the 1990s, Davydov says. There is some truth in this but it is not the whole truth – and recognizing the difference between the two related species is important. Critics often point to Putin’s use...

Trump=Stalin. Well, it does make for a nice change of pace from Trump=Hitler . . . On Joy Reid’s show today, MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance accused President Trump of using KGB tactics in the firing of Andrew McCabe and related moves. Said Nance: “[Trump’s move] comes out of an older playbook, the KGB’s playbook. . . . Donald Trump is literally playing by the Russian playbook on this.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Russia is now experiencing its own “end of history,” but it has turned out to be “not liberal democracy but a new turn back to the enslavement of Russian society, the consequences of which will be its further degradation with prospects that are dangerous both for the country itself and for the entire world.” The West generally and the US in particular need to display both wisdom and political will to effectively oppose the political challenge the Kremlin now presents. It has been an unwelcome surprise for Western publics how well the Kremlin and its ‘information forces’ have studied the...

Yuri N. Afanasyev, a Russian historian and former Communist loyalist who became a leading democratic politician in the late Soviet era ...died Sept. 14. He was 81. In 1989, Mr. Afanasyev helped found Memorial, an organization dedicated to exposing Stalin’s atrocities and commemorating the victims. That year he also joined the Soviet Union’s first freely elected parliamentary body, the Congress of People’s Deputies, which was created under Mr. Gorbachev’s reforms. But he grew disenchanted, doubting that its unwieldy mix of Stalinists, democrats and Communist Party functionaries could bring about change, and denouncing both its “aggressively obedient majority” and Mr. Gorbachev....

An FBI informant told three congressional committees in a written statement that Moscow routed millions to America with the expectation it would benefit Bill Clinton’s charitable efforts as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed through a “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations, the Hill reported. The informant, Douglas Campbell, said in the statement, which was obtained by the Hill, that Russian nuclear executives told him Moscow hired American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide because it would influence the Obama administration and specifically Hillary Clinton.

On a reporting trip to Gaza, Amman, and Damascus in 1994, I made a habit of asking Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders whom I met the following question: Did they think the Jews had a plan to dominate the world? I’ll never forget the enthusiastic answer of a pediatrician named Abdelaziz Rantissi, a Hamas leader, whom I met in his doctor’s office in Gaza. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “I have a copy right here.” And he pulled down from a shelf an Arabic-language copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a response I heard again and...

Former CIA counterterrorism official Phil Mudd: The FBI people "are ticked" and they'll be saying of Trump, “You’ve been around for 13 months. We've been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played. We're going to win" (link: http://cnn.it/2GEPZD3) cnn.it/2GEPZD3

“There is no political opposition in Russia. Parties like the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party are, in effect, sub-departments of United Russia, the ruling party. There is only one power vertical and everyone in politics is in it: some as a back-up plan, just in case, some because they expect preferential treatment. I don’t call myself an opposition. I am just a person of common sense. No one appointed me to my post, I was chosen by the majority in competitive elections. That is why I have more scope to act than government-backed officials. But where I can’t...

Why do unfair elections even matter? Putin’s regime represents - “competitive authoritarianism.” Elections in hybrid systems like Russia are not designed to determine who rules, but rather to signal the regime’s power and resilience to potential challengers. Elections in these polities are often marred by abuses of state power, but they are nonetheless held and can be bitterly fought. It is tempting to disregard the results of such elections because of the extent to which they are manipulated by elites in power. Yet counterintuitively, the level of state control over the electoral process is itself a reason to pay close...

Trump did not collude with Russia to win the election. On the contrary, the evidence continually proves it was in fact the Democrats, the passive GOP establishment, the media, and the Deep State which have in fact been the ones exhibiting Russia-style, KGB copy-cat behavior. It was Democrats like Hillary Clinton who gave 20% of our uranium away in exchange for $145 million of Russian oligarch donations to the Clinton Foundation. (And this is just one example. As nobody seems to want to talk about how much money she herself invested in Russian projects and their nascent tech sector.) So,...

It is now well over a year since Vladimir Putin's Russia passed 'anti-missionary' laws and more than 180 cases have since been brought. Activities ranging from prayer meetings in homes, posting worship times on a religious website and praying in the presence of other citizens have been interpreted as 'missionary activity' with Christians making up the vast majority of the law's victims. One case is that of Donald Ossewaarde, an American Baptist preacher living in Oryol, who was expelled for hosting a church meeting in his house. Having lost appeals throughout the Russian judiciary system, Ossewaarde's case is now with...

The Pentagon’s new defense strategy calls for aggressive steps to counter Russia and China, directing the military to retrain its attention on great-power competition after nearly two decades of focusing primarily on Islamist militants and "rogue" nations. The Obama-era Quadrennial Defense Review called for “preserving strategic stability” with Moscow and Beijing and took a rosier view of the prospects for further nuclear arms reductions in partnership with Russia. Now, the new document asserts in blunt language, both Russia and China must be the U.S. armed forces’ "principal priorities." “The erosion of our military advantage is the problem that the strategy...

An ex-KGB chief linked to the unverified dossier on President Donald Trump was reportedly found dead in the back of his car Dec. 26 under mysterious circumstances. Oleg Erovinkin, a former KGB general, was “found in a black Lexus… [and] a large-scale investigation has been commenced in the area,” Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reports. The cause of death has been established as a heart attack, but media speculation suggest foul play, according to The Telegraph. Erovinkin was an aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and current head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, which is...

Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin may have been reticent to celebrate the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, but it had no qualms about celebrating a hundred years since the founding of the Cheka, Lenin’s political police, on Dec. 20. Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and a veteran of the old Soviet KGB, was predictable in his message. His agency was, he claimed, “free from political influence.” It “does not serve any party or group interest” and even its bloody-handed past was nowhere near as reprehensible as assumed. Yes, he conceded, it was the engine of Stalin’s Great Terror,...

A group of Russian scientists have sounded the alarm over what they said were attempts by the head of the security service to openly justify Stalin’s mass purges, the first such attempt in decades. In an open letter published by Kommersant broadsheet, more than 30 academics slammed Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB security service – the successor to the feared KGB – for seeking to legitimise the mass purges known as the Great Terror. Historians estimate about one million people perished in Stalin’s purges in the 1930s out of around 20 million who died under his three-decade rule...

Kaspersky no longer legal on US public sector networks President Trump has signed into law an order banning the use of Kaspersky Lab products within US government organisations. For months, government officials have been clearing the Moscow-based cyber security company's products from the networks of US federal agencies, a task that is now more-or-less completed. Kaspersky has been accused of allowing its anti-virus software to be used by Russian intelligence to exfiltrate information from the PCs of US government officials, although little evidence has been presented to back-up such claims. The ban is included in a new defense policy spending...

National security insiders are trying to claim treason for the fact that President Donald Trump’s transition team discussed potentially setting up a phone call with the Russian ambassador to the United States.Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin have met publicly on several occasions, and Russia maintains an active embassy in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.The Hill reported: Former national security adviser Michael Flynn spoke with a “senior official” in President Trump’s transition team at the Mar-a-Lago resort to discuss what he should communicate to the Russian ambassador in a highly-scrutinized series of phone calls in December of 2016,...

"Anyone who grew up with the Eastern Orthodox Church (in my case, the Greek Orthodox Church in New York) will get a good laugh at Vladimir Putin pretending to be a Christian during his first Easter as Russian ruler..." "The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been, since its reconstitution during WWII, an instrument of the state. The best illustration of this is probably the 1949 “Greetings from the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church to the leader of the nations of the USSR, the Generalissimus Joseph Stalin on his 70th birthday.” It states, in part: "Witnessing at every...

This amazing monastery, which containing relics from empty tomb of Jesus Christ, was originally built by the Russian Church's most controversial leader, and now restored in all its gloryNew Jerusalem Monastery, founded in 1656 by Patriarch Nikon, remains one of Russia's holiest places. This patriarch's reforms to church services sparked a major schism in the Russian Church, creating the sect of Old Believers. While Patriarch Nikon may still be one of the most controversial figures of Russian Church history, one thing we can all agree upon is the beauty of his colossal monastery. President Putin was very impressed by its...

Sean Brian Townsend is an independent researcher in the field of information and computer security, a member and the spokesman of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance. He explains how Kaspersky Lab and the FSB hacked and leaked the secret NSA tools under the guise of The Shadow Brokers hacker group. These leaks became the origin of WannaCry, NotPetya, and BadRabbit ransomware attacks. The editors of InformNapalm may not share the opinions of the authors in the [opinion] section, and does not alter the original style of the articles. Antivirus software – myths and reality The activities of antivirus (AV) companies are...